Huge financial flows in the construction business will not surprise you. Especially when it comes to large development companies that build dozens of residential complexes, business centers, shopping centers and so on.
But for many equity holders, construction is like Russian roulette. You can deposit your money, and even worse – take out a loan for a long-awaited apartment, and as a result you get nothing but debts, courts and broken dreams.
A similar situation is unfolding with the construction company Donstroy, which has become the personal wallet of the head of VTB Andrei Kostin, and it seems that in the near future it may go bankrupt, leaving dozens of equity holders.
Years of scandalous trail
The history of Donstroy in the construction market is very long. The company was founded in 1994 by businessmen Maxim Blazhko and Dmitry Zelenov.
Maxim Blazhko
Dmitry Zelenov
In the beginning, the business was doing very well. In 2000, Donstroy launched its flagship project – the premium residential complex Triumph Palace. There were hopes for new projects, of which there were a lot at that time. In order to implement their plans, the founders of the company took out multiple loans worth tens of billions of rubles. In 2008, the global financial crisis began, which hit the construction business hard. In 2009, Donstroy actually found itself on the verge of bankruptcy, as it was not possible to pay off debts.
deep crisis
The main creditor of the construction company at that time was the state bank VTB. As a “goodwill gesture”, the financial institution gave a chance to restructure Donstroy’s loans by transferring $500 million worth of assets to VTB. In fact, the transaction was formalized as the sale of these assets for a nominal price of 500 rubles. It was about part of the business of the huge Donstroy structure – the Donstroy-invest enterprise, which owned the developer’s housing projects. Formally, everything looked transparent, but in fact, there were pitfalls in the deal, which no one will publicly talk about.
In 2010, Donstroy Invest was headed by Alena Deryabina, former vice president of VTB. It is obvious that a person not from the construction business will have difficulty managing a development company. But the motivation for this appointment was different. Deryabina is a person who is trusted by the head of VTB Andrey Kostin.
Alena Deryabina
After reshuffles in the management of the company, something wrong began to happen with Donstroy Invest. Despite the fact that the revenue was constantly, although not growing much, the profit of the enterprise did not increase from this, moreover, it remained at the same level for 8 years – 3 million rubles. And this despite the fact that the revenue ranged from 1 to 6 billion rubles. But further – more. Since 2018, Donstroy Invest’s revenue has doubled dramatically. The company showed unprecedented amounts for itself – 8.5 billion rubles. But that was only the beginning. In 2018 and 2019, the company declared record revenues: 28.5 and 27.5 billion rubles. At the same time, profit increased, which amounted to 6.5 billion rubles.
Financial indicators of Donstroy Invest
But in 2020, something incomprehensible happened: the construction business began to lose revenue sharply, and went into debt for 6.2 billion rubles. Question: where is the money? Here we return to the very informal part of the deal to sell the assets of Donstroy for 500 rubles as a loan payment.
banking weekdays
VTB Bank is a huge state machine. The authorized capital of VTB is 651 billion rubles. It is led by Andrey Kostin, who is the chairman of the board. Kostin is generally an unsinkable figure who has been working in the banking sector since 1993. He has been in VTB as chairman of the board for 20 years, and nothing foreshadows his resignation. So, it is precisely due to the fact that Kostin has already “grown” to the bank, many assets (as in our story “Donstroy Invest”) bring profit to Kostin personally. In fact, the business is profitable, but the loss is indicated in the declarations in order to withdraw funds from the enterprise into your pocket.
Andrey Kostin
Kostin’s official income statement is now classified, but in 2012 Forbes said that the banker receives about 900 million rubles from the state annually. He himself called this information “nonsense”, saying that he receives an amount almost 4 times less – 240 million rubles.
Such a salary is the dream of millions of Russians, but only special people can receive it. Especially when it comes to the fact that this money is sent to Kostin’s pocket straight from the state budget.
But even such a huge income would not be enough to own as much property as Kostin has. Since 2018, Kostin has been included in the sanctions lists of the EU, the USA, Canada and other countries.
In July of this year, journalists found a lot of luxury real estate in Kostina in Europe – this is a winery, a hotel, and a villa. In addition, Kostin owned part of the Russian franchise of Burger King and KFC. The total value of these assets is about $130 million.
It is noteworthy that the total number of non-core construction assets of VTB is several dozen companies. The total value of these enterprises is about 40 billion rubles. Officially (think about it), none of these firms make a profit for the state bank.
The logical question is: why keep all this at a loss to the state? There is only one answer – Kostin makes very good money on this. In fact, demonstrating fictitious accounting reports.
We have dealt with Donstroy Invest. The verdict is as follows: no small amount of money is obviously withdrawn from the enterprise. How long it will exist before bankruptcy is an open question, but it is obvious that in such a scenario, no company will survive.
SK “Donstroy”
Nevertheless, Donstroy did not completely go to the VTB financial group. A significant part of the business, and this is the Donstroy construction company, remained in the hands of its founders. At the moment, the founders of the company are 5 different legal entities, but detailed information about them is classified. There are suspicions that not everything is so clean with the construction company
The situation in both Donstroys is mirror-like (which indicates that the business operates as a single structure). We won’t tell you for a long time, but the accounting in them is very similar, only in the IC “Donstroy” the financial indicators are much more modest. The peak revenue of the enterprise amounted to 15 billion rubles, profit – a little less than 50 million. But the main thing is different. All jumps in the financial indicators of IC “Donstroy” and “Donstroy invest” are symmetrical, which indicates that the accounting department of enterprises is drawn on the knee.
Financial indicators of IC “Donstroy”
In 2017, the founder of Donstroy, Maxim Blazhko, was placed under house arrest. Then it was about the deliberate concealment of income, and non-payment of loans. The investigation found that thanks to a simple scheme, Blazhko inflicted a loss of $ 300 million on his creditors, Riverstretch Trading & Investments.
But the businessman managed to get out of the water dry, paying off the debt with the shopping center “Pike”
It is obvious that Donstroy, despite the announced large-scale construction projects, only publicly looks like a solid construction company. In fact, huge financial holes corrode enterprises, and when it goes bankrupt is only a matter of time.